[HN Gopher] Ada 2022
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Ada 2022
Author : tosh
Score : 88 points
Date : 2026-03-06 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adaic.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adaic.org)
| rustyhancock wrote:
| My understanding is that most of Adas users are maintaining
| legacy systems.
|
| It'd be great to hear from anyone who is using it today by
| choice.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| The Ada stronghold is aerospace and defense systems. So these
| may or may not be legacy systems, but they are safety-critical
| or mission-critical systems that rely on long standing well
| defined development processes. That inflexibility means that
| advancements in the technology are very slow to creep into
| usage. That goes not only for the languages/compilers but also
| the silicon and everything in between.
| krior wrote:
| The same can be said for Cobol and its relarionship with
| banking, but you will struggle to find anyone not
| categorizing cobol as legacy.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I'm not in banking so I don't know if banks write _new_
| business logic with Cobol or merely maintain existing
| systems. I would be very surprised, though, if modern web-
| based products are using Cobol, or fancy high-speed trading
| platforms, or big data-driven machine learning, etc.
| Linux-Fan wrote:
| After some search for programming languages which promise to
| reduce the number of bugs, I decided to give Ada (2012) a try.
|
| I like it better than C and C++ and the compiler is included in
| Debian in a reasonably recent version that it can compile the
| code that I need.
|
| Ada is particularly nice for programming RPI 2040
| microcontrollers because for my needs I didn't need additional
| libraries. For both of my RPI 2040 projects (one of which is
| online here:
| https://masysma.net/37/dcf77_vfd_raspi_clock.xhtml), my code
| had fewer bugs than I had anticipated.
|
| For general purpose systems programming the lack of free
| software libraries is still a concern e.g. while working on a
| custom backup restore program I had to write my own LZ4
| extractor and Blake3 hash function implementation because there
| wasn't any existing libraries that I could find for the
| purpose.
| jmccaf wrote:
| My workplace uses Ada SPARK for high-integrity automotive
| software, ported from C or C++. IIUC, the contracts and static
| proofs can replace some activities like isolated unit tests for
| C++ .
|
| https://www.wevolver.com/article/nvidia-adoption-of-spark-us...
| Danidada wrote:
| In case anyone is curious about an overview of the actual
| changes: http://www.ada-
| auth.org/standards/22over/html/Ov22-TOC.html
| phplovesong wrote:
| Many ada devs probably write software i would not be comfortable
| writing. Its always been a kind of place i dont want to be part
| of.
| zardo wrote:
| I wonder what Ada Lovelace would think about her namesake being
| the language for weapon systems.
| zorobo wrote:
| I'd rather fly in an airplane with a system coded in
| Ada/Spark rather than Python -\\_(tsu)_/-
| homarp wrote:
| you have problem with Snakes in a plane ?
| graemep wrote:
| She was an aristocrat in the greatest empire the world had
| ever seen. She is unlikely to have objected to weapons
| systems per se.
| sam_bristow wrote:
| Assuming your discomfort is around the defense side of things
| here's an example of a diving reberather system using Spark/Ada
| from a while back.
|
| https://youtu.be/zL9vVs5vHuQ?si=-thG-FkelkW6oFfb
| melon_tusk wrote:
| I too, would not want to defend my country. I assume that all
| countries want the best for us. It is probably safe to assume
| that everyone wishes us well, and that adversarial countries
| are not developing weapons technology.
| johnisgood wrote:
| If you want to learn Ada / SPARK, try
| https://learn.adacore.com/index.html.
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